


Eleven Days in the Life of Gene Hunt (and one in Sam Tyler's)

by Kirinin



Category: Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Constructed Reality, F/M, Gen, Groundhog Day, Life Philosophy Fiction, Like all LoM and A2A, Mindfuck, Reality Bending, Seriously what were you expecting, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-09 03:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3234158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirinin/pseuds/Kirinin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every day, Gene Hunt wakes up to the tape-recorded sound of Alex Drake wondering what he represents... until he starts wondering that, himself. Groundhog Day trope! Because everyone needs to write one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One

**SPOILER ALERT up to and including the end of Series 2.** I hadn't seen Series 3 when I got the idea for (and wrote most of) this.

 **WARNINGS** for character death and the sort of general brain-screwery that happens when one reads about or watches AtA or LoM.

 **A/N** : Fic that episode tags and doesn't tell you bothers me. (Like I remember every detail of Series 3, ep. 2!) So: this fic starts right after Alex Drake has confessed that she is "like Sam." Gene has Alex's tape; Chris has betrayed them all, and the Operation Rose people will soon contact him again; and Summers has shot his younger self. There. You know everything you have to know.

 

* * *

 

 

"From the future," Gene repeats, after Bolly has gone away, all bright-eyed and heartbroken-looking. "From the _bloody… future_." He stabs his cig out on one of the three ashtrays that pepper the top of his desk, and looks after her.

He can't believe it: he's gutted. He looks over at the memorial picture of Sammy-boy and his chest tightens just that little, like it always does. One of these days, he's going to have a heart attack, and it's not going to be chasing some villain or manhandling a suspect into the clink, it's going to be from looking up at good old Gladys there on a bad day.

 _From the future!_ Where did that come from? Did she think he was accusing her of being a spy, like Sammy before it all went down in the tunnel? _Yes, Gene, and I'm from the future just like him as well._ Only it hadn't come off that way, had it, tears in her eyes and all? Not a trace of fucking sarcasm in her, not for once.

Thing is, he's always known there was sommat a little _off_ about his Bolly, but he never thought she'd be so stone-cold, to parrot poor Tyler's old story with tears in her eyes.

The question is: where'd she hear it? Who'd remember Sam not so fondly, maybe, and be stupid enough to think his antics were a jolly old joke to tell 'round the campfires?

And the answer is: Raymondo.

 

* * *

 

Gene corners Ray at Luigi's, wine in one hand, waiting until Chris and Shaz are occupied with wedding plans and the rest are at darts. "So, Raymondo," he says, "always thought we had the same priorities. Thought we had our ducks in a row."

"We do, Guv." Ray looks up from the dart game, puzzled, but then that's his usual expression.

"Thought we didn't go mouthing off about the dead."

Ray looks disturbed, but keeps his voice as low as Gene's kept his. "Don't, Guv. Wouldn't."

"Not even if the subject was Sammy?"

Ray pauses. "All right, so maybe once I told a few stories to Kirtching when 'e said Chris was the dizziest div on the force, but that were years ago. I wouldn't – I wouldn't say nothing against him. He was a good copper, saved my life more n' once." His gaze darkens. "Who's been talking about Tyler?"

Gene claps him on the back. "Never you mind, Ray. Drink up."

Ray lifts his glass and gives his dimmest grin, but there's a flash of calculation in his eyes. All this talking of the past has made Gene forget that Ray is older and cannier than he used to be. He figures Ray'll divine who's been sullying Sammy-boy's name soon enough, and then Drake had best watch herself.

 

* * *

 

Gene goes to Annie next, though he knows he probably shouldn't.

The house is nice, on a quiet little street on the trendier side of Manchester, the side that is making a bit of a recovery – patched brickwork here, new fence there, lots of windowbox gardens – but Gene cannot help but think that it's too big for just one girl: that she and Sammy had plans, once upon a time.

Annie answers the door with a cup of steaming tea in one hand, and for a moment, her face goes entirely blank in a way that makes Gene unsure of his welcome. Then her features brighten in delighted surprise. "Guv!" she exclaims. "Come in, I was just having a cuppa. Would you like one?"

Gene agrees and ascends the porch to enter the house: modern on the inside despite its ancient brick façade, all cool lines and monochrome palate, with a few homey touches that save it from being austere.

Gene sees Sam's hand in all of it, and decides Annie hasn't changed a thing. He's not sure what to make of that, but he seats himself at the middle of Annie's grey couch.

Pictures of Sam are everyplace, here. There's one over the mantel, he and Annie at an amusement park, Sam wearing that smug little smile that said he knew just how lucky he was to have Annie by his side. A few more are scattered throughout the room, all black-and-white and artsy.

Annie returns with the cuppa and another bright smile, happy to see him.

"So, er… how're you getting on, luv?" he inquires.

Annie's expression doesn't retreat to the staid lines of grief he unconsciously anticipates. Her smile goes a bit softer, though. "Quite well, Guv, thank you," she replies. "Finished the doctorate last spring. You ought to tell Ray, he'll go arse over teakettle." She sips the tea, demure-like, and it surprises a laugh out of Gene.

"I will," he promises.

"Psychology was difficult," she says when he doesn't continue, "but I think my work with you and Sam and the others helped me understand the human mind better than I knew."

"Well, hard _not_ to pick some of that psychoanalsey-whatsis with Tyler around," Gene says, forgetting that Annie's supposed to be a grieving widow – could be because she isn't playing the part very well.

She laughs. "I wouldn't put it that way, but it took me the five years instead of six or seven. I've got my first steady spate of clients. Things are going well. Converted the basement into an office last year with some money we had saved away…" She trails off and for the first time looks… uncomfortable. "Sam was right there with me."

Gene doesn't say much about Sam Tyler's supportive nature or way with women, or even about whether a woman should be living alone and taking strangers – quite possibly, mad strangers – into her basement-office. Annie's a grown girl and she can defend herself better than most. Likely has a weapon down in that basement of hers, worst to worst.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst: that's Annie Tyler all over.

"You 'aven't… talked to anyone 'bout Sammy, have you?"

Annie looks up and blinks at him from behind the tea steam. "Like who?"

"Like… gotten a psych bird of your own, maybe? To… talk things out with."

Annie's brows climb, and her eyes widen. "I don't talk very much about Sam," she says, still blinking those big blues at him. "Sam was… unique, and I don't think there are many people who could understand him the way you and I do – did do," she corrects.

Gene stands, and Annie follows, a beat behind.

"What's this about, Guv?" she inquires, following him to the door.

He turns at the doorway. "Nothing for you to worry pretty little head over, Flash-Knickers."

Annie's expression hardens. "It's about Sam. I _worry_ about Sam." She opens a closet and grabs a hat and coat for the crisp spring weather.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"What does it look like?" she inquires, doing up her buttons. "I'm going with you to the station. Been wanting to meet this Shaz anyway, what with Chris one step from marrying her."

"Don't suppose I could stop you," he replies.

Annie doubles over with laughter when she sees the car, then straightens with immediate – and counterfeit, Gene knows counterfeit – penitence.

"Perfectly good automobile," Gene grumbles, opening the door for her before sliding 'round to his own side. "Turns like a dream."

"Goes very, very fast," Annie agrees, buckling herself in. "Guv, have you heard of Sigmund Freud?"

Matter of fact, Gene has, but he knows better than to open his mouth around an _educated_ bird. He drives slow and careful-like, though, to the station.

 

* * *

 

Annie is received with much fanfare, accepting crushing hugs from Ray and Chris. When she pulls away, Shaz is glaring daggers.

"Hullo," Annie says to the young policewoman, "I'm Chris's older sister, Annie." She sticks out her hand. "Or might as well be. We worked together in Manchester."

Shaz looks relieved, and takes Annie's hand in her own. "You must be WPC Tyler," she says. "I mean –"

"Doctor Tyler," Annie corrects, and the entire station hoots as one entity. Gene looks around and his DI is, as seems to be her habit of late, nowhere to be found.

"Find DI Drake," he tells Ray under his breath, and Ray nods and disappears. Someone procures a bottle of whiskey – and if the whiskey looks familiar, Gene doesn't mention it – and pours Annie a shallow glass. They surround her and begin the usual litany of boasts and brags, exaggerating the danger and the derring-do and in general making policing sound like a bloody two-penny dreadful. By the time Drake is procured, poncy white jacket, heeled boots and injured expression an' all, Annie's grin is knowing and her eyes are dancing. Gene tries to slip away without her, but she calls, "guv!" and follows he and Drake into his office.

Gene reaches forward to tug the blinds down and turns.

Drake seems harder than she did this morning, but beneath that shell, she's just as wounded as before, which is what puzzles Gene the most. Could she be as mad as Tyler was? Or could she be so self-important that she truly believes no matter what drivel she spouts, he'll buy it, hook, line and sinker?

That last sounds more like his Bolly.

"Doctor Annie – " Annie begins, but Bol's eyes flare and she reaches out with both hands to take Annie's in her own.

"Annie!" she exclaims with a queer grin. "Sam's Annie?"

Annie smiles, politely. "You knew my husband?"

A number of expressions pass across Drake's face. He can see the lie form in her eyes; her lips part to convey it. Then she slumps, shakes her head and swallows. She straightens, chin up, and he's startled by a reflexive sense of pride in his DI. "In 2006, yes."

Gene doesn't know he's about to do it until it's done, and Bolly is pressed up against his filing cabinet with his arm across her throat. He isn't pressing hard, but the threat is more than enough.

Weirdly, she laughs. "Now this is familiar," she rasps, blinking up at him.

"How dare you say…" Gene begins. "How dare you talk about…" He's not even sure where he's going with this, but Annie is nodding in a surprisingly calming way, and one slim hand is slipping between he and Alex, and before he knows it, he's backing off. Gene slumps down in his chair behind the desk while the birds do some sort of communion that involves mostly widened eyes and vague shoulder-scrunches.

"Sorry, Guv," Alex says, pushing her hands into her trouser pockets. "I didn't know you'd react this way. I'd never have said."

"But you're not taking it back," Gene said, peering over his hand.

She shakes her head, lips pursed in that noncy way of hers. "No."

Annie leads her to a chair and perches on the side of Gene's desk like she owns it. "I'm guessing you were Sam's therapist," she says, gently.

Bolly's head snaps up in surprise. "I – well, in a way. I was doing research on trauma in the police. I got all of his statements on tape and I – that's how I knew what to expect. Who Chris and Ray and – and Gene were."

"An' you listened to those tapes," Annie said sweetly.

"Well – yes."

"Over and over again," Annie said.

"Dozens of times, probably. Some parts I could quote word-for-word. _I didn't know if I was mad, in a coma, or back in time._ "

Annie smiled faintly, the lines in her face drawn. "It's not all that uncommon," she said, "for a psychiatrist to be drawn into the delusions of her patient, especially a patient as brilliant as Sam. Sam might've convinced a lot more people, if he'd tried."

"Sam was too worried about contaminating the timeline, of changing things. He was a good man, a good officer," Bolly-Knickers says, earnest, "and if this were all real, he didn't want to spoil things. But there's no chance of that, you see. I just watched a man shoot himself."

Annie startles, and Gene rockets up from behind his desk. "You what?! You had best explain, DI Drake!"

Alex shakes her head. "No, no, you don't understand. He's like me, out of the frame of time, and he – he shot his younger self. _Summers_ , Guv." Tears are hanging in her lashes now, and Gene knows it's gone beyond a stunt, beyond a cruel trick, and fallen firmly into the confines of _raving mad_.

"Sam didn't try to convince others because he knew in his heart that he was wrong," Annie says, intent. "You must've met Sam when he was younger, recovering from that blow to the head. But he woke up to us, he came home to me, and he…" She pauses, gathers herself. "He was ours."

"I'm sorry," Drake says, and something seems to go out of her, like a light flickering to black. Her shoulders slump and she rises, curtains snapping down behind her eyes. "I won't talk about 2006 again. I suppose I didn't realize how upsetting it might be for..." She thumbs the incipient tears from under her eyes and strides to the door. "If that's all?"

Gene isn't sure what to say for what feels like the first time in a long time. He feels like he'd just had a conversation with Sammy, in more ways than one: " _You always do this to me - I run in certain and walk out confused!"_ He'd been so sure that Alex was playing some sort of dodgy pool, saying she was like Sam, and now…

"It happens all the time," Annie was saying, sadly. "More than the psychological community would like to admit, I think. Talking to someone with persistent delusions like Sam had… and playing his tapes over and over… if DI Drake was vulnerable, then –"

"That's enough, Cartwright," he snaps, waving one hand, then freezes. "Sorry. Tyler."

She shrugs and smiles. "If nothing else, it's reminded me why I quit policing, sir," she replies.

 

* * *

 

Gene rises and follows after Bolly before he can change his mind.

Bolly has somehow taken the five minutes he stayed talking to Annie and parlayed it into a presentation to the entire station, complete with flip-charts, and black-and-white photocopies of London maps. "Chris?"

Chris sidles forward, still in disgrace, and begins talking haltingly about the three routes that the bouillion truck may take. Suddenly, Bolly's eyes light. "King Douglas Lane!" she exclaims. "That's it, that's the one, I studied it in…"

Gene's expression must be thunderous, because it draws her to a stammering halt.

"That is… I studied something very _like_ this at school. I believe, very strongly, that it will be King Douglas Lane."

Gene eyes her and she rolls hers, and for a moment it's just like it was before he popped that tape in – Pandora's Box, that was. The moment he heard her voice, he should've stopped it, he'd bloody well known it then. "We'll take the most _likely_ route, thank you, DI Drake."

Annie's come out of his office to listen. She touches his elbow with the tips of her fingers. "She's different to Sam," Annie says, looking up at him sadly.

"I know she is."

"She looks sane from the outside," Annie says, nodding over at Bols, who is organizing the men into teams: _Well, let's leave at least one at King Douglas Lane…_ Occasionally she shoots Gene a sort of betrayed look, but that's all there is, no shouting to the loo or demanding of Ray what part of her subconscious he hails from. All neat and sewn-up is his Bolly.

Sam could never hold it all in.

 

* * *

 

It's all gone wrong, suddenly and terrifically wrong. Gene presses down on Bolly's stomach, but the blood seeps up from between his fingers. "No, no, no, no! C'mon, Bolly-Knickers, you're more stubborn than that!"

She blinks up at him. "Sorry, Guv. Going home," she says, and her lids are flickering, and _no._

This will not stand.

"Going on holiday, Bols?"

She smiles up at him, transparent, fond, and Gene thinks _how could I have thought she didn't –_

"Can't take you," she says, patting his hand sloppily. "Sorry."

"Why not?" he demands, and he's no longer sure what they're arguing over, just that he's got to keep her talking. "Aren't I good company?"

"Oh!" Alex says, and the tears finally spill over. "The best! If I had to be stuck here, Gene, I'm glad it was with you, you and Chris and Shaz and even Ray! But I've got to go home to Molly now."

Molly's _dead_ , he realizes with a wash of cold up and down his spine. And he said _you say you have a daughter but I never see her…_ he can see how the ability to turn back time might appeal to someone who's lost a child. Sometimes he thinks about his brother, and how things might've turned out different. He can see how Sam's story might appeal… All the mistakes he'd fix!

He'd step right out in front of that bullet, for starters, or else turn his gun on himself rather than hurt her.

"Would you?" Alex is staring up at him, and her eyes seem suddenly clear. "Would you have _done_ that, Gene?"

"Sure, in the arm, like," he replies, keeping the pressure on. "Where's the bleedin' ambulance is what I want to know."

"That's nice," she says, and closes her eyes.

 

* * *

 

"What d'you mean, there's not a body?" Gene says, and he's surprised he can even hear it the way the blood is pounding through his ears.

Annie is standing beside him, cold and white-faced, professional suit and heels lending her presence some much-needed authority, her fingers hovering near his elbow again as though she means to hold him back.

The nurse shakes her head helplessly. "We removed the bullet, but it was too late; the young lady had lost too much blood. I supposed someone from the morgue had taken her downstairs, but they say they haven't got the body."

Annie steps forward, full of would-be calm. "Do you think that perhaps she could have been moved, mistakenly, to another room?"

The nurse wrings her hands. "I'm so sorry, this has never, ever happened before. Funeral services sometimes removes bodies from hospital, but they're double-and triple-checked."

"Well, obviously there's been an error somewhere!" Gene thunders, smashing his fist down on top of some piece of sterile blah-blah that goes flying across the room: Annie flinches but does not stop him. "You bloody planks've lost the body _of a police officer_!"

"We're – I'm so dreadfully sorry, sir!" the nurse squeaks, and flees, likely in search of a supervisor.

"Or security," Gene mutters, raking a hand through his hair.

"Guv," Annie says, quiet.

Just like that, he calms. At least on the outside. "Yeah, Flash-Knickers. All right." He cracks his knuckles. "Let's talk to morgue _one more time_."

But Alex isn't in morgue. Alex, on further searching, isn't in any of the hospital rooms. Alex hasn't been taken by the funeral homes in the area, no matter how far-flung Chris's and Ray's search becomes: _short hair, curly-like. Big eyes. Green, er, blue? Wears a white jacket, though perhaps they took that off o' the scene. Heeled boots, yeah. Pretty._ Pause for a smack of gum. _No? Well, thanks. Next 'un, Ray._

It's like she never existed at all.

 

* * *

 

Gene curls up at home with a large bottle of scotch. He cannot face Luigi's tonight, and the idea of staying at a precinct devoid of Bolly sends him racing for the Quattro and home. It's why he moved from Manchester, after all: he couldn't face those empty corridors without Sammy.

How can he have lost his two DIs two years apart? "Is that the going rate these days?" he asks himself, pouring the first cup of scotch and downing it in an instant. When he falls to sleep, he's thinking of time travel.

What he wouldn't give to try this whole day over again. He'd turn his gun on himself instead of shoot Bolly-Knickers.

Alex. _Alex Drake._

Sam Tyler.

Both from the _sodding future._

 

* * *

 

 _A/N:_   Hope you're enjoying it so far...

 

-K


	2. Day Two

_…he must never know…_ Gene hears Alex say. _What is he, was does he represent? God, I've got to get away from here, away from him –_

Gene awakes with a start. At first he's only aware that he's fallen asleep in his chair at the station. Again. But an instant later, the front door slams open to reveal Bolly-Knickers herself, live as a wire and in fighting form.

"Tiny doesn't know anything about King Don," she says, closing the door behind her. "But he's scared, Guv. He says the rot runs right to the top and _they are everywhere._ Trust no one!"

Gene stares, looking down at his finger still on the pause button.

Alex blinks and leans forward, her black-and-white blouse hugging her curves and Gene is surprised by the urge to burst to tears. He manfully restrains himself, but still, the urge is there, and that's enough.

"Are you all right, Guv? You look like you've seen a ghost."

He's fine, just fine. He had a dream, all tangled up with his – _feelings –_ about Sammy and Bolly, and that's all. "Sorry, luv. Heard something – disturbing." He presses _PLAY_ again.

_They're Sam Tyler's constructs is the thing, or at least that's how it started. Now I'm worried somehow they've become a part of me, that I'll be unable to let them go when the time comes to go back to Molly, back where I belong._

Well, Gene supposes that's at least better than… that's better.

Alex has gone white, and grips the edge of the desk.

"You said at the very beginning that you'd assimilated Sam Tyler's fantasies," Gene says, direct into her whitening features. "Surely you didn't mean by the letter."

She sits, fingertips still clutching the edge of this desk. "I… I didn't think you remembered that."

"You were wearing red lipstick, high heels, and a skirt so short it might 'ave well been a rubber band around your arse, Bolly, I'm hardly likely to forget. Were you his _therapist_? I 'eard, someplace, that psych birds… get fooled by their patients, sometimes. Is that what happened?"

Bolly worries her lips between her teeth, licks them and pauses. "It's – it's very complicated, Guv, it's very difficult to explain."

"Try me, Princess," Gene snaps. He thinks he should be more worried that Alex is saying the same exact words with the same exact intonation, stresses and breathy whispers he heard in his dream, but he knows her, doesn't he? Knows what she might say in one situation or another? It's hardly so surprising that a great deal of what she has to tell him is the same.

"You know what? No," she snaps, eyes beginning to fill, snatching the tape out of his hands. "I thought you trusted me, I thought –"

"Alex, wait."

She pauses at the door without turning.

"I do trust you," he says, and realizes he means it. Or at least, he means that he can't stand not to trust her, which is close enough, to his mind.

"You've a funny way of showing it."

 

* * *

 

Less than twenty-four hours later, DI Drake bleeds out in his arms and Gene drinks himself stupid at home on his couch.


	3. Day Three

_…he must never know…_   Gene snaps up in his seat and hits pause as Bolly comes striding through the door all over again.

"Tiny doesn't know anything about King Don," she says, as alive and vibrant as ever.  "But he's scared, Guv.  He says the rot runs right to the top and _they are everywhere._   Trust no one!"  She peers at his face and falls to a quiet concern.  "Are you all right, Gene?"

"Let's say I believe you're from the future," Gene blurts, withdrawing the tape and tossing it to her.  "Let's say I believe Sam is, as well.  Let's say I believe in Molly and two thousand six.  What then?"

Alex seems frozen by the tape in her hands.  "Where did you get this, Guv?"

"It was on my desk, it's not important, answer the bloody question, Bolly.  _What then_."

"I – I don't know."  She still looks wary.

"You say I'm something to overcome.  I _represent_ something?  Fictional, am I?  Part of your own, mixed-up inner workings?  Am I the cog you've slipped?"

Alex shakes her head, tears gathering again.  Shite, he's had enough of her crying to last him two lifetimes.  "No, Guv, you have to understand.  This is – it's one of my earlier – I didn't understand, yet."

Gene shakes the tape in front of her face.  " _What_ didn't you understand?"

"That you were one of the best things about this place!" she cries, bringing her hands to her mouth.  "It's only – Sam thought –"

"What did Sammy think?" he shouts, pressed beyond reason, but at least she isn't storming away, at least he's got this moment with her, this push-and-shove, give-and-take that he…

…misses.  Will miss.

"You've got to listen, Gene, please."  She has those hands pressed together at her lips in supplication.  "Sam thought he had to defeat you, as a bent copper.  He was searching for the symbolism, like me, thinking this was some sort of dream-world.  And you've got to know that he didn't think of you that way all the time, even, and that later, he changed his mind.  He chose _you_.  He jumped off a roof in two thousand six to be with you, and Annie and Chris and Ray, and I like it here and I love all of you, but I've got a daughter!  A daughter," she repeats, " _Mols_.  And I miss her so, so much…"  She puts her head in her hands and she's weeping outright now, and every instinct in him wants to draw her close, but he needs to hear the rest.  "And if I die here… I'll never get home."

He gives in and pulls her to him, and she snuggles up to fit, just as she did in that safe.  Like it were entirely natural to her, and Gene shudders.

"Explains a lot about Sammy-boy," he says, for lack of something better to say.  "Fought me at every turn, he did.  I said black he said white.  If I told 'im the ruddy sky was blue, he'd disagree.  A lot like someone else I could mention."

Bolly gives a helpless little laugh, and Gene thinks he should've been listening a long while ago, because it's her usual laugh and it sounds half-mad.

"You still haven't answered my question, Bols," he tells the top of her hair.  "What if I said I did believe you?"

"I don't know," she says, pulling back with a watery smile.  "I'd be… really happy."  She laughs again, cuts it off before it can sound genuine.  "But the madness of it all would be easier to ignore if I hadn't said a word, you know?"  She sniffles and smiles half-heartedly.  "With you _knowing_ , it'd be almost like I had traveled through time."

Gene stares, and his confusion must be plain on his face, because she babbles on.

"I don't know, I don't understand it any more than Sam did."  She slumps into a chair and Gene seats himself next to her.  "It's a dream, right?  I've been shot in the head, it's the last thing I recall.  But you, Gene…"  She reaches out and grips the edge of his sleeve.  "You're _real_."

"As the nose on your face," Gene replies, feeling as though he's falling further and further into nonsense with every word.  But it's Bolly, and this time, this time he's bound to listen.

"And if you're not, debating your reality _with you_ is… is the ultimate madness," she finishes, looking lost.

"I'm _real_ , Alex," Gene pushes.  "Maybe something happened to you, maybe the same thing happened to Tyler, but I am no one's figment!"

She smiles, fondly.  "No.  Which leaves me even more confused."

"And what if I said _I_ was travelling through time and you were the figment?" Gene says, without knowing he's about to say it.

She stares a moment, then laughs again.  "I'd say you were mad."  She takes a deep breath in and blows it out of her nose.  "All right, then, tonight we'll drink to a colossal waste of time," she says, pushing herself to her feet.  She turns at the door.  "There's nothing you can do to help me, is there?"

Gene swallows.  Nothing he can do?  But that's ridiculous.  If there weren't nothing, he wouldn't be repeating… re-living… traveling through time.  Would he?

 

* * *

 

He agrees, this time, to go on DI Drake's hunch about King Douglas Lane, which is less of a hunch now and more of a certainty, and he leaves his piece in the Quattro.  But it only means Bolly is shot earlier, by Jeanette this time, and dies before she hits the ground.

In hospital, he goes straight to the morgue, but of course she isn't there.  Chris is baffled and Shaz's eyes are red-rimmed when he tells them the news.  "Guv," Chris says, gulping, and the hesitance pressed into him by his betrayal is gone in his grief.  "Guv, we've got to look, got to find her."

"She's dead, Christopher," Gene returns.  "No use in looking for her, now."


	4. Day Four

Gene hits pause right away and rockets to his feet before Bolly has the chance to storm in.  This is – it's maddening.  If this is how Sam felt all the time, it's not a wonder he –

"Tiny doesn't know anything about King Don," Alex says, bursting through the door.  "But he's scared, Guv.  He says the rot runs –"

"Shut up!" he barks, and Bolly's lips work silently for a moment before clasping her hands in front of her and assuming a tolerant expression.  "And don't _humour_ me!"

"Very well, Guv, what would you like me to do?"  She's wearing that butter-wouldn't-melt expression, and it makes him _more fond of her_ , and Gene would like to hit her like he hit Sam, not that this would solve anything, but he'd bloody well feel better about things.  Nothing like a good old punch-up to make the world slide to its proper place once more.  "…Guv?"

Gene looks up to find her best worried expression.  "Very well, Bols, tell me what you know of time travel."

"…Guv?"

It's too much, too fast.  She's looking puzzled with a side order of innocent-dumb, and then she sees the red of the tape in the deck.  She storms forward and pops the top and yanks the tape free from the deck's confines.  "Where'd you get this?" she demands, shaking it in front of his face.

He snatches it from her and throws it to the floor and stomps on it, good and proper.  Little bits of tape scatter 'cross the room.

Bols looks baffled and hurt now, not that he can blame her.  But he's so bloody furious he could chew nails an' spit bolts.

"You kept a secret like this from me?  I thought we had something, Bols.  You and me."

"We… we do, Guv," she says, and she's still playing innocent, she's not sure what he heard an' all.

Right.

"About you and Sammy-boy both being from _Hyde_."

She startles, blinks those wide eyes at him.  "I'm not mad," she says, definite.  "I thought of it, and I'm not."

"Know a hawk from a handsaw, do you?"

"Guv, please."

"Please _what_ , Bolly?  Please let you explain?  About Molly and two-thousand six?  _Modern_ policing methods?  Psychology?  Apparently I was Sam Tyler's tumor, or so he thought!  What d'you suppose I am, a bit of undigested beef?"

"No, Guv."  She looks as contrite as if she's screwed up a police investigation, let a villain escape her eye, and this has the strange effect of deflating Gene's temper.  And she's already confessed she believes him to be real, in another time and place, so it's as useful as a rubber crutch to interrogate her now.

"Never mind it, Bols," Gene says.  He's not about to explain to her that he's from the future, too: twenty-four whole hours' worth.

 

* * *

 

This time, when Bolly bleeds out on the sidewalk, Gene attempts to entertain the idea that he is her construct, and the real reason this day keeps repeating is because he can't really exist if she's dead, can he?  If he was born in the mind of Alex Drake – or Sam Tyler, for that matter, and passed down second-hand – then presumably he cannot exist without one or the both of them.

Gene tries to deny the validity of this thought, because it frightens the piss out of him, but he can't toss it out the window entirely.  Sure, Sammy was gone for a year before Drake showed, but one might imagine Alex was reading all those entertaining stories Sam'd laid down, maybe conjuring up Gene having new adventures all the while.  Listening to Sam's voice describe him, over an' over, and hearing what he'd said, what he'd done… and it'd make sense that Alex'd move him to London, right, where her own precinct was?

All right, then, so suppose he _was_ Sam's imaginary friend, and now he's Alex's.  No one in this world gets to know his _purpose_ , yeah?  He's a leg up on the competition.  Bright side to everything.

As the light in Alex's eyes fades, he grips her hand in his, ignoring the chest wound.  She'll be dead soon; the least he can do is hold on to her so she knows he cares.

So she knows _she_ cares?

No, no.  He can't think that.  He's still making decisions on his own, right?  He's still controlling his – her –little world, because Alex is letting him.  Sam fought, Alex goes along.  _More_ , anyroad.

He can't think this.  He _can't_ think it.  It's teasing him apart at the seams.  He tries to think of two thousand six.  High buildings, clean lines, monochrome palates like Sam's and Annie's house.  He can't, he can't, thank God.  He tries again: Molly.  Nondescript little-girl image, good.  Sam's bird, _Maya_ , still no go, sweep of long dark hair a flash in his mind, but she was a Paki, Sam'd told him, that wasn't enough to actually be a _memory_ , right?

_Right_ , he thinks as Alex takes in her last breath of London air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's where I ask if there's enough interest to continue posting this! Leave a comment if you're interested in the story; that's the only way I know if there are people reading, or people clicking and saying, "stuff and nonsense!" and closing the window. ;)
> 
> -K


	5. Day Five

Gene yanks the tape deck from the wall, tape an' all, and slips right past DI Drake as she opens the door to his office.  He tosses the deck into the passenger seat of the Quattro, drives to Drake's apartment and ransacks the place until he finds them , all of them: secreted in a little cabinet, not even really hidden save out of view, bollocks, she's got no sense of self-preservation at all.

The tapes are numbered, and dated as well.  Just like his DI, just like both of them, really.  Everything in its proper place.

He goes back to his house, tosses all the phones to the floor so they're off the hook and settles down with a bottle of whiskey.

He plugs the tape deck back into the wall and listens to it all, straight through.  Bolly's ramblings get less and less mad as they go, he'll give her that.  She starts off panicky, plainly upset, but that changes soon enough.  Just as she gets complacent, though, just as she begins to enjoy the experience of being in 1981, she falters.

 _I've lost Molly's face_ , she says, stricken.  _I – I can't see her anymore, don't remember what color her eyes – oh, God, I forgot her name yesterday, and I – I've got to go home!_

Gene freezes, then pours himself another scotch.  It doesn't matter that he can't see Molly's face, then, does it?  Or Maya's?  Or two thousand six, even?  Not if Alex can't, either.

He checks his watch and curses, then climbs into the Quattro and heads for King Douglas Lane.

It's where he's needed, after all.


	6. Day Six

Gene knocks on the white door with its bright red trim and Annie answers, steaming cup of tea in one hand.  Her features go blank for one second before she opens up to him with her usual, bright grin.  "Guv!  Come in, I was just making some tea.  Would you like a cuppa?"

Gene would prefer burying himself in the bottle, but he's still polite enough to accept.  "Yeah, thanks, Annie."

She disappears off into the kitchen and Gene makes a bit more of a thorough examination of the house.  Black-and-white pictures, check.  Simple but welcoming decorating taste, clearly Sammy's, double-check.  Grey couch – Gene sits at the edge this time, on something lumpy and uncomfortable.  He yanks it out from under the cushion.

It's a tape recorder.  Obviously; of course.

Annie bustles in with a cup and cream and sugar and freezes when she sees what Gene holds in one mitt.  "That's Sam's," she says.  "Sometimes I like to listen to his voice, you know, just…"  She shrugs, awkwardly, and sets the tray down on the table before the couch.

"D'you mind if I…?" Gene inquires, and sticks the headphones over his ears before he can hear her protest.

"…but 2006 was…"

It's Sammy-boy's voice, and there's that urge to burst to tears again.  He hasn't heard Sammy speak in a year and a half.

"… different," Sammy goes on, full of that wry humor that distinguished him amongst his peers at the station.  "Everything so white and sterile.  I hated it.  I'd hated it for a long time, actually, but wouldn't know it, couldn't tell myself, _eh, Sammy-boy, this thing you've worked to all your life: it's bollocks, innit?_ "

Gene hears the echo of his own voice and it surprises him so much that for a moment, he forgets to breathe.

"Sitting in a meeting," Sam goes on, drawing it out, emphasising: _mEEting_ , "I thought, is anything being accomplished?  The Guv would… poor Chris'd be lost here… what are we _doing_?  And I must've been trying to ground myself or something, gripping it so tightly as I did, but I'd cut my hand, and I couldn't – couldn't feel it."

Annie is watching him, now, and she's lost all pretense at making tea, offering him biscuits.  She sits and her eyes are focused on him, only Gene.

"I thought, if I can't feel it, I'm not really here, am I?  Maybe two thousand six is the delusion.  Or maybe it isn't, but I'm not _really_ in two thousand six _now_ , and I never returned.  Or maybe…"

His voice trails off and there's that patented, mad, Sam-Tyler laugh, strangled off and teary and Gene's chest clenches like it does when he looks at Sammy's picture.

"…and then… nothing," Sam whispers.  "It was like my logic had been cut off at the knees.  The justifications… stopped.  The reasoning stopped, the rationalizations stopped, and my head was clear, for what felt like the first time in...  No.  In _years_."

There's another long pause, and when Sam's voice returns, it's quiet, wondering.  Whole.

"I thought, _I love Annie Cartwright_ , and _I've got a job, a proper one back in '73_ , and _they need me_ , and… I saw it, I saw all of it, and I was on the roof and I thought, _it's a small chance, but miserable or dead here is all the same_ , and so I jumped.  I jumped."

Gene swallows, looks up at Annie.  Her features are calm and blank.

"And the next thing I knew, I was back.  Back in the tunnel, and – I saved them.  I saved them," Sam's voice is full of relief now.  "And I don't care, do I, I don't care if it's minutes I've got with them here, or days, or weeks, or years, because every moment I can be here, living my life, doing _good_ , every one of those moments is – _precious_ –"

"You girl, Gladys," Gene mutters under his breath.

" – and if they turn off the machines, well, all right, then.  I'll have had my chance, here, in this world.  And this world is _real_ , Gene Hunt is _real_ , Annie Cartwright is _real_ …"

Gene stops the tape and pulls the earphones down.

"It's his last one," Annie says.  "There are others, but it's this one I listen to the most.  When he came back to us.  When he decided to stay."

"Well, what's your take on this, then, Flash-Knickers?" Gene asks, tossing the tape deck to the side.  Suddenly he's tired, so tired, and he slumps back into her fashionable couch.  "Was he mad, in a coma, or back in time?"

"He decided to stay, that's what matters," Annie says firmly.

"But what d'you say about someone who believes they've been sent back in time?  Doctor Tyler?"

Her lips twitch at the sound of her new title.

"And how likely is it that someone close to Tyler could've been sucked into the same delusion?"

Annie's features sober as she takes this into careful consideration.  "It's true that sometimes, a therapist can become convinced of a patient's story," she allows.  "I'd even say that it happens a bit more than most would like to believe…"

"I know all that," Gene says, waving her impatiently away.  "What about those who _aren't_ the therapist?  The common man."

Annie nods.  "Well, _more_ common, really.  Often members of the same family will share a delusional state – tight-knit groups, like.  It's the foundation for all cult-behavior…"

"A family?  A tight-knit group?"  _Like the station,_ Gene doesn't say.

"And the solution is typically to separate the members of the group.  The originator of the delusion will remain deluded, but the adherents will soon know their own minds again, sometimes without any intervention on the part of the therapist at all."

No chance of that, though, Gene thinks.  No chance at all.  He can't escape Bolly, not if he tries.  Because maybe, in a way that he doesn't like, but is beginning to accept, he _belongs_ to her and to Tyler.  "What if that's not possible?"

"It's rare, but sometimes someone can wake up on their own.  Like Sam," Annie says, fondly.  "But forcing someone to face a delusion is a difficult process.  You have to appear to go along, at least at first; arguing with someone who is delusional makes their belief stronger, if anything."

"Because people with delusions are contrary creatures," Gene replies, thinking of Alex, thinking of Sam.

Annie nods, her shoulder-length hair bobbing.  "If our Sam is anything to go by," she replies, soft, and Gene realizes it's one of the things she liked best about him.

Always fighting, was Sam.

 

* * *

 

This time, against all of Annie's sage advice, he fights her.

"What if it's _not_?" he demands.  "What if you're not going home to Molly?  You said, you told me that if you died here, it was all over!"

Alex blinks up at him, confused.  "I never said –"

" _You told me!_ " Gene thunders.  "What if this is all that's real?  You were awful confused when you first arrived, Bolly, maybe you'd been hit on the head, like Tyler, and that's where your similarities begin and end!  Maybe _there is no Molly_!"

Alex's eyes flash, then spill over with tears.  "I'm dying, you Neandertal, the very least you could do is be kind.  I thought – I thought we liked each other, I thought –"

"I _do_ , I _love_ you," Gene says, and presses his lips to hers, because what the hell.  She _is_ dying, about to be _dead_ as a matter of flippin' fact, and he's been cruel to her in her last moments.

She tastes like champagne and blood.

Right.


	7. Day Seven

When Alex pushes to get through the doorway, Gene leaves the tape running.

" _…he must never know…_ _What is he, was does he represent?  God, I've got to get away from here, away from him._

" _They're Sam Tyler's constructs is the thing, or at least that's how it started.  Now I'm worried somehow they've become a part of me, that I'll be unable to let them go when the time comes to go back to Molly, back where I belong."_

Alex reaches out and grabs for the tape deck, fumbling the fast-forward button until she manages to click on STOP.  She yanks the tape out and slips it into the pocket of her trousers, as though she can possibly hide what the tape has said.

"Honesty all the way, eh?" Gene says.  "So: I'm a construct, yes?  Invented in Sam Tyler's fevered imagination, resurrected in yours – nineteen eighty-two model, complete with kung-fu grip!"

Alex is shaking her head, lips parted.  She looks as though this is the most horrifying thing he's ever said to her.

"You're supposed to agree with people in delusional states," Gene mutters to himself, he thinks quietly enough, but apparently not: Bolly's expression relaxes, and her cheeks pink.

"Very funny, Guv," she snaps, crossing her arms.

"Don't make it not true."  Gene takes a deep breath and resolves to give it another go.  "Don't stop now, Bolly, not when I've halfway accepted it.  See, you die in a matter of hours, and I apparently stop existing.  As I'd rather not disappear, I'd like to figure out how to keep you alive.  If it's all the same to you."

Bols looks up, grinning, but the expression fades away, and it's all wide, quivery eyes again.  "You're serious.  How did –"

" _DI_ , Drake, _DI._   Dunno about you, but the DI before my name stands for Detective Inspector.  I detected and inspected, and the evidence points to you being – something like right, for once."

"And you're not… distressed?" Alex inquires, peering at him with her psychologist's eye.

"Not too thrilled, mind you," Gene confesses, "but _cogito ergo sum_ an' all of that.  It'd take a mind deeper than mine to sort this, so kudos to you and to Sam-bloody-Tyler."

Alex's mind appears to finally catch up with him.  "I _die_ in a matter of _hours_?"

"Repeatedly," Gene says, and Alex bounces out of her seat.

"But perhaps I go home –"

"No," Gene interrupts, "or my happy little world would keep on spinning, don't you suppose?"

Alex stares him down again.  "You're serious," she repeats.

"As a bloody root canal!" Gene booms.  "I'm not having one on, Detective Inspector Drake!  D'you know what I've spent the past week doing?  Talking to the station about the King Douglas robbery, to you about Sammy-boy, and to Doctor Annie Tyler about my _feelings_!  And then watching you die… over, and over, and over again."

Alex has gripped both of his sleeves in her hands and is trying to calm him, but he feels like smashing all the world.

And something in Gene… _slips._

"I can't – can't stop it," he hears himself say as though from far, far off, allowing her to clutch at him because he needs, he needs to be _grounded_ in a way that only another human being's hands will manage.  "Can't stop the car –"

"…the car," Alex repeats –

– and Gene suddenly realizes he's no longer talking about Alex at all.  Or it's about the both of them, it's the same.

Alex gathers him into her arms and he clutches at her, moorless.  "Gene, Gene," she says, and it sounds both chiding and fond.  "D'you know, I don't think I could deal with finding out I was imaginary.  You're incredible."

 _I'd only be that way because you made me so,_ Gene thinks, but he can't voice this one, even as he clutches to his maker for dear life.

When he pulls away, Alex reaches out with a gentle hand and sorts his hair.  "I'm so sorry," she says, talking to his fringe, eyes soft and sweet.  "This is terrible for you."

 _You're the one who keeps dying._   But he's lost the power of speech.

"Take this one off," she says, sensible.  Sane.  "Go home.  Sleep.  I'll manage dying on my own just this once."

When one receives an order from God, Gene supposes, he can only obey.


	8. Day Eight

Gene Hunt goes to Sam's old apartment.  No one's rented it since Sammy, or perhaps it's that it's empty again.  He shimmies the lock and slips inside, then bolts the door behind him.

No one will think to look for him here.  He curls up on the fold-up cot, boots dangling off the edge, and flips up to stare at the ceiling.

So this is how Sammy felt all that first year: turned up-side-down and shaken 'til the world spun about and the colours all ran together.  Gene, looking back in time, wishes that he could have placed a hand on Sam's shoulder and explained that he knew just how it was.  Though he'd tried a few times – tentative, hesitant stabs at Tyler's madness, he sees them for what they are, now – he should have tried harder.

His brother… Sammy-boy… Bolly.  He's failed them all.  In Bolly's case, over… and over… and over again.

Who creates a puffed-up failure as his mentor?

DI Sam Tyler, of course: someone who wants to feel protected but simultaneously superior.  That's what Annie'd say.  That's what Drake'd say.

Drake's right about one thing: he needs to sleep.  He's not sure he's really making sense anymore.

It occurs to him, not for the first time, that he's had some sort of crazy blindside him.  He's police, he knows that sometimes, perfectly normal – or, strike that, _mostly_ normal – human beings will suddenly begin to behave in a way that is half a bubble off plumb.

He needs to stop examining the possibilities and _act_ , is the thing.  Acting is what he does best: leave this soppy solipsising to Tyler.


	9. Day Nine

Bolly isn't God, Gene reflects when she bounds in, excited at the break in her case.  She's a lady, perhaps a brilliant lady, capable of inventing the likes of Gene Hunt – or, at least, carrying him on – but she's stuck here without a way out: a damosel in distress.

He can handle that.  Just.

"Tiny doesn't know a thing about King Don," she chirrups, eyes alight with the fire of a really good case.

He finds he still loves her.  Loves her more, God help him.  He must be staring, because she falters.

"What?"

He slides to stand in front of the tape deck.  "It's nothing, luv.  Go on."

"But Tiny _is_ scared," she obliges.  "He's believes that the corruption goes all the way to the top."

"So we've no additional evidence," Gene replies, thinning his lips in distaste, forcing himself to carry on as he would without this unwelcome knowledge.

"No," she agrees, "nothing specific.  No _hard_ evidence, just – hunches.  Guv, you've got to trust me."

"I do," Gene replies, feelingly.  He's brought up short by the passion in his voice, and so is Alex, who looks up at him and smiles.

It's a new smile, fresh and unguarded and very _un-Bolly_.  It brings the both of them up short all over again.

"…then," she says, ducking her head, "then I think –"

A knock sounds on the door.  Gene's head jerks up: this is new.

Shaz sticks her head in the door.  "Ma'am… I… I think the Operation Rose people, they tried to contact Chris again."

"Where is he, Shaz?"

The three hurry down to a parking deck, where Chris is standing, looking miserable.  Though Bolly'd explained this to him on the first go-round, it's the first time he's here for Chris's pronouncement and Shaz's proclamations of love.  It's sort of sweet, really, not that Gene can help but break it up.  They're on a schedule, after all.

Gene agrees to have all units on King Douglas, leaves his gun in the Quattro, and when Bolly's about to get it, he grabs her by the waist and swings her in a dip.

Jeanette's bullet pierces his shoulder and shatters his collarbone.  He falls forward, and Bolly goes down beneath him, slamming her head against a bit of concrete; he can hear the blond running off, high heels clacking against the pavement as Bolly blinks, dazed, a pool of their mingled blood staining the dirty street.

Right.  No winning, here.

"Gene?" she slurs, blinking up at him, dazed.  "Gene?!"

"Wherever you go, I'm coming with you," he says.

"Gene!"

"I get it, now," he says, sweeping her hair out of her eyes.  "I save you, right?  That's what I'm here for, isn't it?  Your knight in tarnished armour?"

She cries, and he's had enough of that crying: a lifetime's worth in nine days.

"There when I'm needed, gone when I'm not, yeah?"  He swallows.  His vision is going a bit blurry from blood loss, so he flips to lay flat against the concrete and takes her hand.  "You're not leaving, are you, Bolly?  Not when we were getting on so well."

"No," she says.  "No, Gene, and… and you have to stay here, too."

But her fingertips are growing insubstantial in his own.  That, or he's dying and losing the feeling in his limbs.

"Can't, Bolly," he says, with some satisfaction.  "Can't be where you're not.  You'll have to stick around, if you want me here, too."

She gasps a sob.  "I have to – Molly!"

Gene realizes he's making her choose, and he feels six kinds of monster.  "All right, then, Alex," he says.  Weary, wearier than he's ever been.  It's the blood, he tells himself, falling from him like water through a sieve.  He's so tired.  "Go on home.  Go home to Molly.  It's all right."

Suddenly, he can feel her fingers clutching at his own, again, tight as vises.  "No!" she says, "I won't without you."

 _Nutters_ , he thinks, closing his eyes.  How mad to think your imaginary friend should follow you to the grave.

But it isn't as though he can deny her anything, not when she asks properly.  So, "…all right, Bolly," he says, gazing up at the sky as the same stale, overused air sweeps past him, and beyond that, the selfsame clouds in that selfsame sky.  "Thick and thin, yeah?"

"Gene," she whispers, a world in the word.

And that is that.

* * *


	10. Day Ten

Gene keeps his eyes closed. He keeps his eyes closed because he's afraid, afraid to hear Alex's voice, tinny and somehow even more posh-sounding through the deck, and he breathes out slowly, and the room feels smaller, and darker, and narrower.  The door opens, but he doesn't rise.  He sits, leaning back in his chair, his palms pressed against his closed eyes and doesn't respond to Alex's "Guv?"

He hears her approach, the _click_ of her finger against the STOP button, the clack of boots ridiculous to a police officer as she draws near.

He opens his eyes to Alex's hand pressing against his shoulder, her fingers cupping its roundness, her eyes wide, lips pursed in her _worried-about-you-guv_ way.  Gene has no words for her, cannot find the way out, he has done everything, tried everything.  If he thought the key was loving her, _seeing_ her, he knows he could've unlocked the door ages ago.  As it is, neither love nor death nor good old Gene Hunt follow-through seem to budge the universe.

One day of losing Bolly-knickers was more than enough.  But now he can see a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, a million such days, stretching out in front of him: a bleak and weary landscape.

"I'm sorry, Guv," she says lower lip trembling.  "I'm sorry I asked you about Sam Tyler, but I'm lost, and I don't know what to do."

"You and me both, Bolly," Gene says, and pours them both two fingerfuls of scotch.

 

* * *

 

Gene passes the Operation Rose job on to Ray, and he and Alex spend the rest of the day at Luigi's, going more and more sideways as the day toddles on.  It reminds Gene of when Alex first arrived at the precinct, believing, he now knows, that the entire world in which they live is nothing more than a funhouse fantasy.  Gene knows how it can be when you can't trust your own senses, when all you've got is whatever's inside.

"When I first arrived here, I was so confused, so alone."

It's the first Alex has ever offered him on her own, which makes it an unusual and important event, and Gene's reply even more important to get _just so._   He leans forward across the patterned tablecloth, chin pillowed in one hand.  "That's where you're wrong, Alex.  You were never alone.  You and Tyler, always thinking I was a force to be overcome.  That we weren't in this together.  You both chose to be alone."

"Perhaps you're right, guv," Alex says swirling her glass of white wine.  "Perhaps that's just the way we work, me and Sam."  She looks up at him, and her eyes do that squinty thing she does when she believes a suspect is lying to her.  "But this isn't just about the tapes," she says licking her lips.  "You wouldn't hand a case off to Ray just because you had evidence I was even madder than you thought.  What is going on, Guv?"  Her lips compress and he realizes she's worried again, worried for Gene Hunt.  It, more than anything else, seems unreal.

"What's going on.  What's going on is that no matter what I do, nothing ever changes."

"That's the job, Guv," Alex says, pressing the tips of her fingers into his arm, real as anything.  "You can't let yourself think like that.  You're making a difference, Guv, really."

Gene realizes this must be what Sammy and Bolly felt like all along, everyone talking around the real problem.  "Did you really think that you could have made us all up?  That your brain was so complex, so wondrous, but it could invent the likes of Gene Hunt?  And not just me, Bolly, but Chris, Shaz, Ray, the entire station, all of 1982?"

"It seemed more reasonable than the alternative," Bolly says, tossing her hair.

"The alternative being that you are stuck here?" Gene says.  " _With_ us.  Really."

She leans forward even more, tipsiness making her lower her voice, intimate: "…the alternative being that I'm an accidental time-traveller, or mad as a box of monkeys," she confides.

"I see.  Given that…"  Gene toasts her.  "…I suppose I can understand why you decided you were a veritable psychological genius, capable of inventing a host of personalities tailored to suit."

She looks surprised he agrees.  "Cheers, Guv," she says after a moment, tilting her wine glass his way.

"But… you knew Tyler, before.  You were his psychiatrist."

"Psycho… wait, no, that's absolutely right.  I was."

"And he talked about me, the precinct back in Manchester, our cases."

"He did.  Rather enthusiastically."

"So Tyler would've invented me, not you."

She looks up at him from under long lashes.  "You sound awfully serious about it."

"Am," he replies, downing the last of his scotch and signalling to Luigi for another.  This time, the Italian leaves the bottle, eyeing the pair with his usual weighty significance: knowing precisely what is going through their heads and happy he has no part in it.

"You aren't taking me seriously, Guv," Alex says.  "Are you?"

"Ah, Drake, I always take you seriously," Gene counters.  "If I don't, you lay these soppy gazes my way, like I've smashed your lippy and drowned your kittens in a well."  He sees her roll her eyes away and has to add, "If you'd had the day I'm having, you'd be ready to believe anything.  I just want to get to the bottom of it.  That's all."

"That's all _I_ want," she says, suddenly, drunkenly sincere.  "What became of Sam Tyler, Guv?  Why won't you tell me?"

And Gene closes his eyes again, because it's this, it's always this, always _Sam_.  Anger rises in him like a rough wind around his ribcage, his heart, and then he realizes it's because _he doesn't know_.  "One day he was here," he says.  "Then he was gone."

"Do you think he went home?" she asks, careful all over again, like careful now does them an ounce of good.

"Home to the future, Bolly?" Gene sighs, running a hand down his face.  "Who knows?  Perhaps, and good luck to him."

 

* * *

 

They end up in bed together, upstairs on her gigantic thing with the satin sheets, and Gene'd be chuffed if they weren't both fully dressed and on the verge of passing out.  Alex is blabbing the whole thing to him, her and her parents and the exploding car, Molly, her daughter, with light brown hair and sweet, bright eyes, and Blackberries to make a cobbler.  Her fears that he'd _made_ Sam disappear, but she knows, she _knows_ that can't be it, now.

In 2006, she says, they have these phones, like those car phones you see today, but mobile, able to be carried about, much smaller.  (He remembers Sam muttering about _mobile numbers_.)  In 2006, women are a bit more respected in the police force, but "…psychology, understanding people, a woman's job, even if it is for the police, so I wasn't the brunt of that joke."  In 2006, there is global warming and Doctor Who is back again.  Women are hiding again, their hair smaller, their shoulders smaller, their makeup lighter.

It's like being in that locked filing room, knowing that he and Bolly could die together, and somehow that's making her lean against him, tucking herself under his arm, scooting close.  Somehow, that makes her look up at him like she knows him, loves him, trusts him the way he has no choice but to love and know and trust her.

She's very, very drunk.

"You aren't saying anything, Gene.  I know you must think I'm mad.  I think I'm mad, half the time."

"I've lived the same day over, ten times," Gene says.

She pulls away, staring.

"So, does that make this an imaginary world?  And me, an imaginary person?  Probably, Bols.  But maybe you're imaginary, too.  Maybe we can all be _fictional_ together."

"You're having me on," she says, scuttling back.  "You're imitating me, Guv.  _Please._ Don't."

He reaches out to her with both hands, drags her back in.  After a moment of pushing him away, she relents.  "No," he whispers into her hair.  "No, Bolly-luv, no.  We're just mad together, is all.  We can be one, enormous, jiggling box of mad monkeys together."

She laughs, then, her best mad, Bolly-laugh, and he smiles, or at least his face stretches like a smile, as he leans into her.

"I would talk to Ray," she says, long after he thinks she's fallen asleep.

Gene tilts his face down, only to find that her head is tilted up.  They're centimeters away.  "What?"

"Ray," Bolly repeats.  "Sometimes.  I know it's weird.  But sometimes, Ray knows things."

It occurs to him that he hasn't spoken to Ray except for that first day.  That first time, where he asked Ray if Bolly'd heard about Sammy-boy from him.

"Ray," Gene says, incredulous.

"Well, I wouldn't waste any more time on me," she replies, turning her head to snuggle back into his shoulder, voice far too clipped and sensible for all the wine she's tipped back.  "I'm wrapped up in my own worries, too much to be of any help to you.  If you're really going through the same day over and over again, you need someone who thinks differently to you.  Or me."

"Oh."  Gene settles back, himself, and Bolly squirms a bit, cushioning her head in the best possible position.  It's silent for a few more minutes.  It's the best Gene's felt since the whole business started, Bolly tucked under his arm: the way it should be.

That's when they get the call: Ray and Chris and Shaz are at the morgue.  The operation went south in a pretty spectacular way, without either Gene or Bolly to head it up, and the idiots are dead, all three.

He gets to watch Alex go through the paroxysms of grief that now seem too familiar to be entirely real.  He watches her wrack herself with guilt – _we should've_ been _there, Guv!_ – and rail at him, pounding his chest with her fists.

"Are you _mad_ , are you really that _mad_?" she shouts, and slaps him.

"No," he says, "just.  Used to it."

She stares.

"Get out, Bolly," he says, too tired for it, now, for any of it: for Chris's young face, slack and cold; for Shaz's dark hair, still sticky with blood.  The coroner could hardly recognize Ray, because he'd tried to get between the kids and the bullets, and Gene is sick of it all.  "I just want this day to end," he tells her, and she stumbles off.

* * *

A/N: Aaaand, review? I do have this one completed already, but I'd like to hear what you think of it.

-K

* * *


	11. Day Eleven

Gene flips the tape recorder off, absent and automatic-like, long before Bolly's had the chance to storm in.  He opens a drawer and slips it inside, just as Bolly opens the door, lips parted, ready to speak.

But she doesn't.

Instead, she stares at the spot where the tape recorder is/was/will be.  Gene sees her lips press together, watches her eyes roam the room, before she says, "King Douglas lane, Guv.  I'm sure it'll be King Douglas Lane."  It's impressive at first, and then heartbreaking – Gene feels it, right in the twinge where only Sammy used to live – that she is so used to disequilibrium that it only takes her a moment to rally, even though she knows… what?  Something.  Something more than she did in the past gaggle of yesterdays.

"Relax, luv.  Garibaldi?"  Gene rustles around the papers strewn across his desk to offer Alex a biscuit.  After a distinct pause, Alex snatches the Garibaldi out of Gene's outstretched hand, and crunches down on it with an almost rebellious air.

Gene wonders if he should go for Sam's _softly-softly_ approach or his own, more familiar stepping-on-yer-toys gambit.  But if past is prologue – and ruddy hell, it seems to be – if he jumps in with both feet, Bols'll turn those cow-eyes on him and close up faster than a virgin's legs.  So Gene slips the tape player out of its drawer and places it before her, and says nothing.

"W-what's this?"

"You know what it is, Bols.  Don't you?" Gene asks.  _Softly-softly_.

"No.  Yes, I mean, of course that's my tape.  I don't know what you heard, Guv, but you've got to believe me," she's saying.  She's looking distracted-like, still, eyes wandering the room.  Heart not in proving her innocence, not this time.  "I didn't…"  Her attention snaps back to him.  _All_ on him, it takes his breath a moment how _here_ she is, all the whirrings of that big brain focussing on him.  "I don't believe it anymore.  None of it," she says, voice sharp and intent, and her lower lip wobbles just that little bit, and before he can stop himself, he's crossed to the other side of the desk and taken both of her hands in his.  Weird, poncy move, he can tell she's not sure what to do with it.

Shaz sticks her head in the door.  "Ma'am, I think the Operation Rose people… oh, I'm sorry."  The door closes, quiet-like, around Gene holding both of Bolly's hands in his, like he's about to propose bloody marriage.

Bols pulls back, looking up into Gene's face, into his eyes.  "I… I haven't imagined this, have I?"  Her eyes turn assessing, pushing him the way she might a suspect, and suddenly he knows how she gets a result.  "You do remember, you saw them all… d-die… like I did.  Didn't you, Gene?" she says, and the words are sharp with panic.

Gene sighs, even while part of him longs to punch the air, sharp with triumph: he's brought her with him, she knows, he _isn't alone_.

Words aren't any use.  So he cups her cheek with his hand – bloody hell, she's tiny as a teacup – and leans forward to kiss her forehead, his lips sweeping past soft curls.

When he pulls away, her eyes are wide.  "Are you still… you?" she whispers.  "Are you still Gene Hunt?"

"Not sure of anything much anymore, but I am sure of that," Gene says, which sits like a lie on his tongue.  In the churn that is his brain, he is no longer certain who – _what_ – he is, if he is even real, or if he is only as real as Sammy or Bolly can make him, if _Gene Hunt_ is only a collection of firing and misfiring neurons.

And so what if he is?  What man can say any different?

"All right, Gene?" Bols says, gripping his arm, eyes on him, assessing, categorizing, cautioning, and he can see she's caught the lie.  Maybe her psychologist's eye can even see the rip up and down his psyche from his day off in the Sam Tyler Suite of Misery, like fresh blood spattered over a new corpse.

"It's not my first time 'round," Gene admits, because she has to know, doesn't she, or she's going to keep staring at him like he's lost his mind – and isn't that a bloody turnabout?  "So I'm sorry if I'm not quite _myself_ at the moment, DI Drake.  Considering I've watched you shuffle off the mortal coil _nine times_ , I feel I'm fit as a bloody fiddle."

Bols mouths nothing at all for a bare moment before Shaz pokes her head in again.  "I'm sorry, Ma'am, but it's very important.  Chris, he needs our help."

"I… yes.  Of course, Shaz," Bolly says, while maintaining eye contact with Gene.  "I'll be there momentarily."

"Of course, Ma'am."  Shaz disappears.

 _"Nine_!" she hisses, the moment the door's closed.  "I was sure I'd imagined that part."

"Perhaps you're like a cat," Gene observes.  "Why don't you go ahead and help Shaz.  Take this one on, eh?  See if you can do any better than I can."

"But… the day, repeating," she says.  "I'm dying, over and over again, don't you _care_ , Gene?"

He turns to stare.  "'Course I do," he says.  "You know I'd move heaven and earth.  It's spitting in my face to think otherwise," he adds, low, and something of his hurt must come through, because Alex's features shift from imploring to shamed, and she worries her lower lip between her teeth.

Finally, "yes, Guv," she says, closing her eyes, as though the admission pains her.

He sweeps past, through the door to his office, and out into the station proper.  She turns.  "But… what if I need your help?"

"Nonsense, you're a modern woman, you can handle anything!"  Leaning forward, hands on the doorframe, he whispers, "I trust you, Alex.  Do you trust me?"

A smile tries to form on her lips, wavers, tries again.  She shakes her head, and he knows it's more kin to disbelief than distrust.

"Good," he says, striding forward through the station; then, "Raymondo!" in his usual station-voice, yanking Ray up by his leather jacket.  "Pub."

 

* * *

 

"So, Raymondo," Gene says, once they're settled down at the bar, drinks in front of them, "always thought we had the same priorities.  Thought we had our ducks in a row."

"We do, Guv."

"Thought we didn't go mouthing off about the dead."

Ray looks disturbed and surprised – his Guv took him off of an active case to talk about this – must be terribly important – but keeps his voice as low as Gene's kept his.  "Don't, Guv.  Wouldn't."

"Not even if the subject was Sammy?"

Ray pauses.  "All right, so maybe once I told a few stories to Kirtching when 'e said Chris was the dizziest div on the force, but that were years ago.  I wouldn't – I wouldn't say nothing against him.  He was a good copper, saved my life more n' once."  His gaze darkens.  "Who's been talking about Tyler?"

"You don't think it was odd, the way Tyler scarpered off?"

Ray blinks a few times, turns his own version of _worried-about-you-guv_ on Gene.  "Tyler's dead, boss."

"Come on, Raymondo.  You and I know better," Gene says, turning his attention to his drink, and when he turns it back to Ray…

Ray shrugs, sheepish.

The tension of the last ten days seems to fall right out of Gene, like blood from a bullet-wound, and he nearly topples over with the loss of it.

"Didn't know you knew," Ray goes on, oblivious, taking a pull of his own glass.  "Tyler didn't seem to want anyone to know.  Not even Annie.  Wrong, if you ask me."

Gene pictures Annie's face – sorry but not grief-stricken – and pales.  "I believe she did know.  Does," he tacks on.

"Well.  It didn't sound much like Sam to make 'er suffer," Ray agrees, pleasant-like.  "Glad to know it."

"But why'd he go at all?  Did he tell you?"

Ray blinks.  " _Me_ , Guv?  Me an' Tyler didn't get along so well on the best of days.  I'll admit I learned a lot from him.  An' I think he did from me as well, not that he'd admit it under threat of torture.  But we weren't exactly mates.  If you think Annie knows, maybe you'd better go and ask her."

"There's _nothing_ else you know about Tyler?" Gene presses.  He can't leave this avenue unexplored, Bolly'll kill him dead.

Ray claps him on the arm.  "It were wrong, that he didn't tell you," he says, solemn as only Ray can be.  He ducks his head.  "It were wrong that I didn't."

Gene swallows.  "It's all right, Raymondo.  You kept a promise.  I'm not angry.  Not with you."

 

* * *

 

He drives for the third time to Annie's.  She's standing there in her doorway, wearing that soft sweater and holding a mug of tea, and he wants one, badly.  Wants a splash of scotch more.  He seats himself on the grey couch, hers and Tyler's, and he thinks of how to break into this.  If he does this wrong, he could be scaring or scarring poor Annie… then he remembers she's Flash-Knickers Cartwright, with him years on the force and he thinks about the other days he's spoken with her: what a grown-up she's turned out to be, how steady, how good.  And he's ashamed, for a wink, of the instinct to protect her even if it damns him.

"He's not really gone, is he?" Gene says, when she hands him his own cuppa.  He sips it slowly: just right.

"I can still feel him.  Everywhere," Annie replies, wistful.

"No," Gene says.  "No, I mean."  He pauses.  God help him if he's wrong.  "Sam left, didn't he, Flash-Knickers?  He isn't dead.  He's just… gone."

She stares, and her eyes go a little blank, just for a moment.  "No.  Sam died.  You went to the funeral, remember?"

For a moment, Gene can feel it: a memory _trying to form_ , in his head.  A memory that starts with the sound of weeping and the smell of earth, and the patter of rain, but… no.  No, it _didn't happen_ , and he shoves the spinning film reel away with an effort that leaves him shaking.  "No," he says, aloud.  "No, there wasn't a funeral, just the article in the paper.  I never saw him buried.  You never saw him buried.  Something's happening, Annie, something dark and world-shaking, and I can't…"

"Oh, Guv," Annie says, sitting beside him on that couch.  "I've heard that members of the same family can share a delusional state – tight-knit groups, like.  Kind of like the station?"  Her eyes go soft, kind.  "We'd all like to think that he's gone… back.  It's natural, to want to think that Sam's gone on a trip somewhere, and I suppose he has; but he's gone where we can't follow."

"You know he's not actually gone," Gene says, "or you'd be more upset at losing him.  You and Sam were as perfect for one another as any pair I've met, and you act like you're talking about burying a favourite _Yorkie_."

Her features close off.  "My grief is my own, _Mr._ Hunt.  Now I'd like it if you'd leave, sir.  Please."

 

* * *

 

On the street, Gene sees him for the first time, and can barely trust his eyes.  In Manchester, which makes sense.  Clothed in The Jacket, which makes less sense.  Walking towards him casually: barmiest of all.

Gene has gone 'round the twist in a new, and unexpected fashion.

"You've got to stop this," Sam Tyler says, but before he's got the words out, Gene is crushing Tyler to him.

"Guv.  Guv, you're suffocating me."

"Well, Gladys, how can I help it?  It's good to see you.  Really.  I'd punch you into next month if I weren't so glad."

He releases Tyler to get a better look at him.  Eyes crinkled with joy, the way that Tyler'd been the last few years they'd worked together – after he'd unstuck that boot from his jacksie.  Close-cropped brown hair; small and whipcord strong: a sight for sore eyes.  Gene thumbs a tear away, ducks his head to avoid Tyler catching him being sentimental.

"Why, Gene!  You _girl_ ," Tyler crows.  Then, quicker than you can think, he grabs hold of Gene's lapels and yanks him forward, out of the way of a speeding lorry.  For a moment, they just breathe, Sam's hands still full of Gene's lapels.  Tyler's back is pressed against the Quattro, and Gene is pressed to Tyler, and Gene can't help but feel as though he's caught in some nightmare, someone's slipped him the mickey, that a ghost just saved his life.

"The middle of the road," Tyler says, half-laughing, half-breathless with fear, "is not the ideal spot for your nervous breakdown."

Gene claps him on the shoulder again, trying to regain equilibrium, even though he can't seem to move away from breathing Tyler's air.  "I'm glad to see you," Gene says, and it's ridiculous, because _of course he is_ , and he's also mystified and furious.  Of all the times for a pleasant inanity to slip out!  Next it'd be _lovely day, Tyler, isn't it?_ and _What do you think of City's chances against United?_

Sam shrugs and strolls over to sit in the passenger side of the Quattro like it's any other day.  Except Sam never sat in the Quattro.  It's both of his worlds, Cortina and Quattro, Manchester and London, Sammy and Bolly, bleeding together.  He's not sure he likes it.  He doesn't bother to fire up the Quattro: where would they go?  Every place Gene can think of, Tyler would be recognized.  Then again, putting Bolly and Tyler in the same room might be more fun than a room full of nuns with Tourette's.

"You've got to stop bothering Annie," Tyler says.  "Guv, please.  She doesn't know anything about this."

"And just what is _this_ , Tyler?"

Sam sighs.  "My problem would rock your world, do you remember?"

"From the future, in a coma, back-in-time, blah-de-blah- _blah_ ," Gene replies.

Tyler stares for a moment, then throws his head back and laughs.

It doesn't sound mad at all, is the thing.

Gene waits for Tyler to overcome his hilarity; remembers all over again why he used to slam Tyler into various file cabinets and convenient walls back in their Manchester days.

Sam catches his expression.  Swallows.  "You mean it," he says.  "You aren't having me on.  You really know.  And you're trying to get out.  As one would."

"Well, I haven't degenerated to shouting _get me out of here_ into the loo," Gene says.

"You're a better man than I," Sam replies, and Gene wants to say _of course I am, Sammy,_ all braggadocio, but there's something so odd in Tyler's gaze, that he can only sit silent and very, very still.

Sam turns away, says nothing for awhile, drumming his fingers against the dash.  It's clear he isn't sure how to proceed.  As usual, it's up to Gene to forge ahead.

"So if you're not in a coma, how're you here?"

Sam turns to stare.  "I'm… dreaming.  I dream I'm back here.  The same dream, over and over again, with little variations.  Sometimes.  Annie keeps… well, she's seen me.  Twice.  Before I could get away.  I'm not trying to bother her.  I'm not.  It's just, sometimes… I dream myself back home.  Before I can get away, she catches me."

"Annie told me she knew nothing about it."

"She seems to bury it away.  Thinks it's her mind, playing tricks.  I hate to do that to her.  But I miss it.  I miss her."  Sammy's eyes skitter up to his, and away.  "So I'm not sorry," he adds, defiant.

"Never missed the job enough to come back," Gene says, eventually.

Sam swallows.  "That's why I moved you south.  Because I knew… sometimes, I might be tempted to go back.  To places that I've spent loads of time, you know.  But if you weren't there… and Chris, and Ray…"

"…you wouldn't stay," Gene finished with a sigh.  "So it was you.  You invented me, did you?  Odd choice for an imaginary friend, I'd say, Sammy."

Sam says nothing for a long moment, drumming those fingers on the dash again.  Then, he clears his throat: "When I was little, mum took me for tests.  Genius-level, they said.  Also… unstable.  Sociopathic tendencies."  Sam runs his hands over his head again, and Gene suddenly recognizes, in a flash of insight, _his own habit_ in Sam.  Or Sam's in him.  "As a boy, I used to make up stories.  And later, sometimes, I'd forget they weren't real."  He sighed.  "When I had my accident, I was sure I was only doing it again.  That was why I kept believing I could just snap myself out of it: I always had been able to, before.  If I just said _it's not real_ , and said it long and loud enough, it'd all go away."

"But this one not only runs along, it runs along without you."

Sam looked over at him, and nodded.  "I think I made something… real.  In its way."

"There's a bird working for me now who swears she's from 2006 an' all.  Alex Drake."

"Alex _Drake_?" Sam says.  "Ohgod."

"Your therapist, Sammy-boy.  She let me know right away."

"She didn't say any of what I told her, did she?"

"She called me a construct in the first few minutes of knowing me, if that's what you mean."

"Alex Drake is a real woman.  I mean, there is a real _version_ of her.  She's my therapist.  So far as I know, she hasn't disappeared or been shot in the real world."

"In the real world."

"Yes."  Sam's avoiding his eyes, now.  Sam feels bad about explaining Gene's fictionality to Gene, which says something about Sam.

"I don't want to go away, Sam.  I don't want to die."

Sam squeezes his eyes shut.  "No," he says.

"So Alex and I are coming with.  We're joining you in the real world."

Sam's head snaps up.  "Gene.  You can't."

"I can and I will, Gladys.  Perhaps you made me, but you don't know me very well.  My name is Gene Hunt, and I am no man's plaything.  You may have set this world on its course, like bloody God playing cricket, but once you've tapped the ball our fate's out of your hands.  Just you watch us, me an' Alex."

Sam stares at him a long, drawn-out moment, and then he's laughing and crying all at once, bent over double in the passenger seat of the Quattro.  "God, Gene.  _I think I missed you most of all_."

"Yeah.  Well.  The feeling wasn't mutual," Gene gruffs.  "It was nice to be able to say 'black' without a girl's voice saying 'white' at my right hand."  He clears his throat, because he has to know.  "What'll happen to me an' Bolly if we… follow you back?"

"You're a part of me, a part that's splintered off.  Sometimes, I think the best part.  Maybe… maybe it'll be like being in Manchester again.  Together.  I don't know."  He puts his head in his hands, forcing a thin laugh between the gaps in his fingers.  Then, between one strangled, cut-off laugh and the next, Sam's gone, disappeared, without so much as a _puff_ of displaced air left behind.

Gene stares at the empty seat for what must be a quarter-hour, repeating the conversation to himself, because the instant Sam's gone, it's already entirely unreal.  Over his own scent, and the smell of Bolly's perfume, he can still smell _Sam_ , as though he's stepped out of the car for a butty, like he'll be back any moment.  But Gene knows Sam has woken, is walking around at his flat in _the real world_ , pouring himself coffee or tea, hair mussed, the pad of his bare feet pressing against a cold, tile floor.

For a moment, Gene can almost feel the chill of the tile against his toes.  It feels as real as the Quattro, as his camel coat, as Sammy's voice and Alex's eyes.  It feels like the world on waking, where you are two places, your warm bed and your fantasy, and you can choose where to be.

Gene swallows, and turns away, because there's that funny, clenching feeling around his heart, and he thinks it's time; he thinks it's going to be time, soon; he thinks he's going to be leaving, and there's never been a question that he's leaving with Sam.

With Bolly.

 

* * *

 

Later, "It's all right," he says, stroking Alex's hair away from her eyes as she blinks at the empty air above, eyes unfocussing.  "It's not going to happen again, Alex.  Not again.  We're going together, you an' me.  Back home, to Molly."

Alex mouths a word: _Molly_ , he's sure of it, but then her lips purse and part and compress together and it's _Sam_ , of course it's Sam.

"You were onto the right thing all along, find out what happened to Sam, and I was the slow one, wasn't I?  Well, we're going, now.  We're going to Sam."  Gene closes his eyes, focussing on Sam, on 2006.  The tall buildings, the _fantastic_ _coffee_ , Maya's face.  He's going to bloody well click his heels three times, if that's what it takes.  "Focus, Alex.  Think of Molly and the bloody _future_."  And if that doesn't pull them through…

Well, he thinks, and the irony only strikes him later:

There's always tomorrow.

 

* * *

A/N: Boy. The EDITING on this one. I finally had to tell myself to STOP FUSSING WITH IT!

Eleven down, one more to go!


	12. Day Twelve (Day One)

Epilogue:

* * *

When Gene Hunt opens his eyes, it's to a monochrome palate, with a few splashes of bright colour that save it from being austere.  He sits up, and he's in a bright, clean, modern apartment with a handful of exotic plants.

He pulls himself out of bed, walks around.

It's an odd place.  The decorative taste is schizophrenic: it seems like the black-and-white photographs of the local architecture, the white, shag rug, and the trendy table with a frosted, clear top were picked out by one person.  It seems like the poster of the 1970 Chevelle, tucked in a corner next to a window, the weird collection of eclectic mugs scattered about, and the bright red, shiny teakettle with a large daisy painted on it were chosen by someone else entirely.

It's almost as if two people live here – but there is one table setting, already laid out on the trendy table, one set of clothing in the bureau.  When he continues to snoop, he finds frozen meals for one in the weirdly futuristic-looking, brushed-metal freezer.

"We're _here_."

He turns, and Alex is sitting in the chair at the table, the one with no place setting, smiling.  She stands, graceful, and walks around the room, poking into drawers, peering into the fridge, and rifling through the shave gel and cologne and toothpaste in the bathroom.  He sees no reason not to let her.

Then, she peers about, detective's eyes narrowing.  "Weird," she says.  "Sam Tyler, pre- and post-1973."

Suddenly, he sees it; of course: Sam, jacksie and post-jacksie.  The kettle looks Annie Tyler all over.  The car – he feels an unexpected, warm flush – him.  All the mugs: maybe Tyler liked having them about, like at any moment someone from the station might pick one up.  Five years ago he might have called it pathetic, but now it's… good.  Nice, that Tyler hasn't forgotten them all, _put away childish things_.

He likes it.  He _knows_ it.  It already feels comfortable.

"…But where's Sam?" he asks, then brings his hands up to his throat.  His voice sounds funny.  High.  And… he feels queerly low to the ground.

She peers at him, takes a step forward like she wants to touch.  "You _are_ Sam," she says.

He goes to the bathroom, to the mirror.  "Ohgod," he says, in Sam's own incredulous tenor.  He turns to her.  "I'm Gene," he says, " _Gene Hunt._ "

The feeling is inexpressible – dissociative, jagged-edged – to see Sammy-boy's face when he looks in the mirror.  "Aren't people with multiple personality disorder supposed to ignore or explain away their physical differences?  They're not _supposed_ to be shocked at their height, or weight, or voice..."  He looks down at his pyjama trousers, comfortable and worn-thin.  "Or worried about shrinkage in the men's department."

She smiles.  "Your personalities are integrating, Gene.  _Sam_.  I expect I'll be next."  She places a hand on his cheek, and he leans into it.  "Kiss me, then," Alex says, but then she looks a bit like Annie, before she's Alex again.  "While we still can."

He looks at her, swallows.  "Don't want to die," he says.

"We won't, Guv," Alex promises, tears hanging in her eyes.  "We'll be with Sam.  Don't you want to help Sam?"

"What about Molly?" he says.  "What about your little girl?"  He remembers, _but what if there_ is _no Molly, no 2006?_   The way her lips twisted with pain, the way the tears spilled.

Alex's forehead tips forward to rest against his, instead.  "She's got a real mummy.  An Alex Drake of her very own.  She won't miss me."

"And Chris and Shaz and Ray?"

"They'll find their way out, one at a time.  And so will the others."  She sniffles, and when her voice emerges next, it's shaky, and would-be brave, and squeaks a bit at the end.  "And then we'll be whole.  And together, Guv."

Gene suddenly knows why he's never slept with Alex Drake, why he's never done more than hold her, brush her lips with his.  He knows if he really kissed her – if he kisses her now – it will be the end of him.  When Alex's lips meet his, he won't be Gene Hunt, not anymore.  He'll be someone else.  Someone _new_.  "God, I don't – I'm not sure I want –" he says, clinging to her.

"Come along, Guv.  Be brave," she whispers against his lips, and then Sam Tyler is standing in his kitchen, blinking, and dazzled, and alone.

He's got the worst headache.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

It's weird coming from a big fandom (HP) and a tiny fandom where I'm pretty well-known (Ranma) to become a tiiiiny drop in the tiiiny fandom that is A2A. I have a Doctor Who / LoM crossover I'm considering finishing, but like this one it has a weird and difficult ending. What do you think? Should I give it a go?

Writing in Gene Hunt's voice was a challenge. I found myself turning to urban dictionary and Brit colloquialisms sites for some of it, but with Gene there's a certain flavor that goes beyond mere slang. He has a very distinct way of speaking and presenting himself, and I went to the source material numerous times to hear Glennister say things so that I could re-establish his 'voice' in my head. Numerous sites with favorite Gene Hunt quotes exist, and I consulted them frequently, to laugh if for no other reason. He has a way with words, does Gene.

Not only that, but I spent more time than you'd imagine, researching multiple personality disorder. Alex is a personality in Sam's head, so she is not an actual clinical psychologist. Her idea of all the personalities collapsing into one may not be entirely accurate.

If you'd review, I'd greatly appreciate it. If you could address the following, I'd love you to heights as of yet unknown by man:

1) I'm considering a oneshot sequel to this fic. Shall I?

2) What is a better summary? It's become a cliché to say, "I'm crap at summaries", but I'm really, REALLY crap. Help?

3) What did you think? :D

Thank you and goodnight.

_The TEST CARD GIRL approaches your screen. She reaches out one, slender finger to hit the review button. The SCREEN goes BLACK._


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